in Singapore we have janitors but the students are expected to clean up after themselves, especially their classrooms.
ipad. wet. do you know how often i have to clean the screen?
What is the minimum number of victims used for the definition of evil acts? Is there some kind of internationally-recognised unit of evil-measurement?
[quote=“Rigamarole, post:35, topic:575091”]
The very foundation of our country was based on rape and murder.QUOTE]
I don’t know if I would take it that far, but we’ve done some bad stuff, yeah.
I don’t think “negro” is inherently racist-its still on the census forms as an option along with “African-American” and “black”.
No but would you say Gadaffi and Hitler are equally evil?
Is that a useful comparison? Are we letting off everyone who can be judged to be less evil than Hitler? Or should we perhaps accept that all humanity is at times capable of acting wrongly, that some wrongs are worse than others, but that the actions of one person or a group of people don’t necessarily define a whole country?
By the way, for the past week, the only thing I’ve heard here in Korea from Koreans of all sectors of society is not “Japan deserved it,” but rather, “How can we help?” I like that. I also hope some others (like those folks in the “facebook meme” idiocy) will learn something from that.
Because any such generalization is, by its nature, invidious. How do you react to generalizations about your country? Assuming you’re American, how many of those generalizations (loud, unwilling to learn foreign languages, imperialistic, insular, xenophobic, etc. etc.) are you willing to take on as meaningful regarding you?
The point is that Japan is and always has been, as every country or group is and always has been, a collection of individuals. “The people of Japan” is an abstract concept, which cannot, by its nature, have a “character” of the type being discussed here. Only the individuals in the group have characteristics of that sort. Some Japanese are petty, or criminal, or vicious, or out for what they can get. Some may have characters bordering on sainthood. And all the range of whatever you can think of in between. I have known a lot of Japanese people in my life, and I am not comfortable making generalizations about them. I have known even more Americans, and I don’t make generalizations about them either.
“A people” is just a bunch of people. They may share cultural or physical similarities. Beyond that it makes no sense to discuss generalizations.
Roddy
I am impressed. When I was there on a brief visit in 1987, the tour guide shared a lot of bitterness about the Japanese occupation (from 1905 to 1945, I think). She led us to believe that everyone thought that way. I am glad to see that there are counter-examples.
Roddy
For many years I’ve understood that the American deep south had a general negative character with respect to attitudes towards black people. I never thought it was neccessary to only consider members of the KKK with the charge of bigotry. It doesn’t take rocket science to be aware that any culture is not made up of unanamously minded individuals, but when a particularly negative expression of a collective society predominates, that society, the people, can and should be subject to criticism.
Bull.
There are a number of disputed territories, mostly historically uninhabited, in the Pacific, including the Spratly Islands which are claimed by the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc., and the Sengoku islands, claimed by Japan and China.
To equate disputed territories to East Prussia does not help your cause.
I disagree, especially with your concept of “collective society”, which in my opinion is a useless and misleading one.
To what end, exactly, would you criticise a society? If you make that judgment and then meet one person from the south, do you treat that person as if they corresponded to your opinion of their place of origin? Or do you legislate so as to punish that society? Do you personally boycott the area? It seems to me that all you get is the personal comfort of pigeon-holing a bunch of people that you don’t know.
By all means, criticise any behavior that you find disagreeable. When you see instances of that behavior, point and laugh (or whatever your reaction is). I immediately lose respect for your discourse, however, when you do what you did here, which is to paint a whole society with such a broad brush. Not to mention that I believe that your characterization of the South is wrong and out of date.
Roddy
Well I didn’t charracterize the present American south . I did use the past tense. Given that you believe my characterization is out of date, implies it must have been in date at some point, then I must conclude that we are in agreement after all and that you do accept that characterizing a “collective society” (who were you quoting here?) is warranted in some cases.
I hope you do take up a class in logic and learn how hard it is to prove a “For all X, if X is Y, then X is…” statement.
Anyway, this is a story I heard from a friend, and hence it is not a first-hand account though to me it’s plausible. A little bit of background: we’re located in a former Japanese-occupied territory.
The friend is from a media school and a group of his friends were working on a RTS mod for a project. The theme they chose was the period in WWII when the Japanese invaded the country. So the demo featured primarily Japanese military units, and their acknowledgement voice over was in Japanese.
As they were showing off the demo (hooked up to a projector and speakers), as luck would have it, there were a couple of Japanese visitors at the school. When they stopped by to see what was going on, the visitor apologized profusely to my friends for their past actions.
Grain of salt and etc.
The question of apologies and responsibilities for actions in WWII is not as easy as it may seem.
Japanese, for the most part, are not particularly knowledgeable about the war. The subject gets rushed through in high school history. There haven’t been a push to educate the public about the terrible atrocities which their troops committed.
A Japanese friend back in the early 80s was surprised to find out that a elderly Korean woman knew Japanese, and had no idea why.
However, there isn’t a really strong feeling of being simply victims of the atomic bombs either. Certainly the people I know who lived through the firebombing knew the hell which that war was for civilians.
After the war, the Japanese did a collective, let’s pretend it never happened, which was partially enabled by the American occupying forces who found it convenient to coop the emperor, for example.
OTOH, the Chinese have aggressively played the victim of the Japanese during the war, and while while this certainly was the case, the government neglects to mention the even greater number of civilians killed by the policies of Mao after the war.
I’ve read that the younger Chinese now are angrier than the generation who lived in the war.
While it’s easy to pretend it’s a blank and white issue, the truth is more messy.
Yes, I should not have said “out of date” I should have just stuck with “wrong”, because that actually reflects my opinion. I was getting tired of writing at that point so I took a misleading shortcut. Here is what I meant:
Even if it were accurate to characterize a society in this way, which it isn’t, your characterization seems to be based on something from the past rather than current conditions. Therefore, for two reasons, it’s wrong.
By the way, although you used the word “had” as an indicator of past tense, your syntax is by no means all that clear; you used “I’ve understood” to indicate a present condition. It is, at best, ambiguous.
For what it’s worth.
Roddy